I'm thoroughly disappointed with Antec's designers, once again. Look at this picture for instance
Have you ever seen a more hideous front panel? What's up with the weird pseudo-diamond shaped holes? That's a dealbreaker for me. I just can't cope with pointless "cosmetic enhancements". What's Antec's logic behind this? "It looked too plain." "Needs more random holes."

As this picture shows,
it's barely smaller than a regular P182, so unless you like random holes in your front panel, and a "racing stripe enhanced" top exhaust, I really don't see the appeal of this case. Check this out
Dude, sweet man, it's totally shaped like an arrow. It'll go faster or something.

I didn't mean to discourage you. If you like the case, go right ahead and buy one. I've had a number of Antec cases, some I liked (SOLO!) some not so much, but the MP180 is the worst of both worlds in my opinion. It's only slightly smaller than a regular P182, but has horrible cosmetic "features".

I didn't mean to say I want a small case. I actually want p182, have already decided for it's design, but I prefer cases smaller, and no matter what the downsides of this case are, since I will still switch from FAR worse case, that I am currently using.

i think i'm gonna change over from a p180 to this. smaller, better cable management. really stupid way to "protect" the top fan.

i wonder if my floppy cable would reach if i installed the drive on the bottom. ugh and what do i do with my fan controller! why couldn't they just put one hard drive cage on the bottom, and keep the 5.25 bays up top.

Deal breaker for me (apart from the hideous design and being in "love" with the Solo) is that they insist on that top exhaust. Also, judging by the pictures (and to make it even worse yet), is that the top exhaust fan seems to be a 200mm one!

Have you ever seen a more hideous front panel? What's up with the weird pseudo-diamond shaped holes? That's a dealbreaker for me. I just can't cope with pointless "cosmetic enhancements". What's Antec's logic behind this? "It looked too plain." "Needs more random holes."

Looking at this picture, I wonder if the holes in the door are actually necessary to help airflow - as the case is shorter, the slots around the side will have less total intake area, and a much bigger proportion of that area is taken up by the front ports and switches. Definitely a fashion disaster though - Antec really need to pay whatever it takes to poach some of Silverstone's designers...

The extra HDD cage in the top compartment is a good idea - I'm sure three out of four 5.25" bays are just dead space in the majority of setups.

fresh wrote:

One thing that troubless me most is the lower chamber's intake for fresh air. It's in the midle, so anything put in front of the case would not be cooled by air pulled from PSU.

I may be seeing things, but it looks like the front bays in the bottom compartment are actually 5.25", so perhaps they don't really need much cooling - maybe they're just intended for fan controllers or whatever...

fresh wrote:One thing that troubless me most is the lower chamber's intake for fresh air. It's in the midle, so anything put in front of the case would not be cooled by air pulled from PSU.

I may be seeing things, but it looks like the front bays in the bottom compartment are actually 5.25", so perhaps they don't really need much cooling - maybe they're just intended for fan controllers or whatever...

I was gonna put my hd501lj encaged in scythe SQD-1000 so at least some airflow would be needed. I could open the 5.25 brackets, but then I would have to manually install dust filters. That kind of takes the magic away, since I already have fully modified case and was hopping to get it wholesome this time.

DVD burner in the top slot, fan controller in the lower chamber, intake air coming in through *both* drive cages in the upper chamber - there you go, sorted, at least in this... umm... case.

I think overall it could actually be a more effective setup than the P182 itself - I've never been entirely convinced by the "use the PSU to cool the HDDs" idea, and there are several threads here where people report P180/P182 HDD temps in the fifties unless the central fan is used (which can bring its own headaches, especially with longer PSUs).

With this arrangement, you keep the main benefit of isolating the PSU in its own airspace, so avoiding heat from the system components causing the PSU fan to ramp up - if the PSU becomes a major noise source, not much you can do unless you want to void your warranty and risk a fan swap. On the other hand, the HDD(s) in the upper chamber will be cooled by the main system exhaust fan(s), which will be shifting more air than a PSU fan, and over which you have more choice and more control, so hopefully you could normally avoid any need for spot cooling with intake fans. At the same time, you've got double the front panel intake area to the main system chamber, which some people feel is inadequate in the P182 without installing a Kama Bay or home-brewed equivalent.

The main fly in the ointment I can see is the door itself, which looks quite restrictive due to the lower total area of the intake slots, but maybe the holes make up for it a bit... *has doubts*....

Or my speculation could turn out to be garbage (sadly not an infrequent occurrence), and the case could be a pile of junk in practice. I guess only the official review will tell...

Meant with my Sonata II. In this case you can't have an optical drive in the top slot, front panel starts to vibrate. Also have to reserve extra space for Fan Mates, so middle slot is only empty one.

I was demonstrating a point regarding the "3 out of 4 5.25" are waste of space" comment.

Sorry, yes, I got what you meant, I just went off on a bit of a tangent. I do stand by what I said though - from what I've seen, *most* users normally only have one 5.25" bay occupied (by a single optical drive), with any others just sitting empty and wasting space.

The mini-P182 looks quite an efficient solution to both situations, at least on the face of it. If of course the appearance doesn't put you off too much... (raises hand)...

Oh, come on. I've seen far worse looking cases from the perspective of estetics and I still couldn't call them ugly. This may ba a shocker but I prefer a "stupid" arrow over a circle, even though it's a kill for an airflow.

I wonder if they released a prototype knowing that the good folks at spcr would kind of well, give it the once over.

There is one glaring weakness here noted by all of you and that is the restrictive grill. Do you think they might be "listening"? Is it too late to do some final tweaking of the design?

I hope so. I sent in two suggestions via their suggestion box:
- change the ugly top grill but keep the 200mm top fan (the door design looks good to me)
- make sure there's enough space to have both front fans and HDDs installed simultaneously

Post above says October. I actually sent Antec an e-mail last week to see if they would tell me anything and they would not say anything further...I just got a note back saying they could not give information on unreleased products...blah blah blah..........

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